Offering Unofficial Rewards

“Unofficial” rewards are those that generally don’t require the HR team’s approval or even participation, although again this will vary from company to company. As such, these are generally easier to hand out, but will also often have a smaller impact on the individual.

Party!#

Probably the most common of the unofficial rewards is the team party: take a few hours, combined with some food and beverage, and socialize. Before announcing the party, however, take a few moments to make a few decisions ahead of time:

• Where? Onsite, offsite, or remote? If the party is held within the building, the company will most probably have some kind of limitations on food and beverage (most notably alcohol) that can be brought inside. Space limitations may also apply. Plus, you just can’t really get all that obnoxious when there’s people trying to get work done just one cubicle wall away. Additionally, if members of your team are remote, it can feel very exclusionary to hold something in-person when they can’t attend. In that case, do something over your videoconference software of choice, and consider shipping something (food or beverage) out to everybody ahead of time.
• When? Remember that your team has lives after the workday is over, so don’t just assume that everybody can get together on a Thursday night in a bar, particularly if they have spouses and/or families. On the flip side, however, many people can feel awkward walking into a bar or bowling alley at 1 in the afternoon.
• Food. Sure, everybody loves cake, but a non-trivial number of people also have religious and/or medical concerns that mean that there’s no one dish that appeals equally to everybody. (I’m a carnivore of the highest-order, and one of my best friends is a strict vegetarian.) Keep that in mind—combined with the knowledge of your team your 1:1s have given you—when planning any food options.
• Beverages. The elephant in the room here is alcohol: while many companies (particularly startups) like to proclaim their “work hard, play hard” culture, alcohol at a company-sponsored event can be playing with fire. Remember that if you buy the drinks, you are a company representative and you now assume a certain amount of liability for whatever happens. This means you, personally, making sure that everybody behaves within acceptable limits (and stepping in if they get out of hand) and gets home safely. Keep in mind that certain religions forbid the consumption of alcohol entirely, and many people have medical concerns and personal histories that may make alcohol an unwelcome participant. Exercise deep thought here, consult with the HR team to make sure you stay on the right side of the company’s policies, and when in doubt, err on the side of caution and choose to be a “dry” party.
• Activities. While sometimes it’s best to just sit around in the break room and chat, some celebrations call for something a little more celebratory, like bowling, or miniature golf, or a water park. Many large cities have all sorts of fun diversions that cater to corporate events—I’ve personally been to axe throwing, immersive combat simulations (basically networked video games), escape rooms, paintball, and go-kart racing. Again, keep your team’s interests and restrictions in mind when you think about the event—if you have a team member who requires physical accommodations (for example, they are wheelchair-bound), go-kart racing is a bad idea. Or, if you have someone who is claustrophobic, escape rooms can be difficult for them. And so on.
• Participants. Sure, your immediate team is invited, but take a moment and stop to think, are there others who can/should be invited? Software development is a team sport, and sometimes the team is larger than just your immediate team: the product folks, the marketing folks, the sales folks, the administrative assistants, all are reasonable candidates to include as part of the celebration. Also, decide up front if this is a “company” party, or if you want to let “plus-ones” and/or families to participate.

Lastly, when planning the party, make any costs explicit to the team/guests, but look to absorb as much of the cost as possible, footing the cost yourself if necessary. It’s not as much of a reward if everybody has to pay their own way. (That said, frequently the exception is alcohol: it’s very common to pay for everything except drinks, which then neatly avoids some of the liability mentioned above—although not all.)

Swag#

T-shirts! Cup holders! Pens! Laptop stickers! The possibilities are endless, but the point is the same: give the team or the individual specific items of “swag” that allow them to proclaim their success. For a team party celebrating their Big Release, get custom T-shirts printed with the code-name of the project on them. For the individual who worked significant overtime to squash all the bugs, get them a custom “Bug Hunter” T-shirt. For the employee who is celebrating their 5th year with the company, get them a custom jersey in their favorite sports team’s colors, with their last name and the number “5” on the back.

Work with your leadership ahead of time to determine what your budget limits are here, and have several items “in your back pocket” to reward people with as opportunities arise.

New technology opportunities#

Let’s be honest: many developers got into this industry because they just flat-out enjoyed programming, and many find they don’t have the time to “tinker” and explore the new things that came out within the last few years. Couple this with the fear of “falling behind,” and it starts to become clear why it may be considered a real reward for you to tell a developer to take company time to go learn a new technology (programming language, database, mobile platform, whatever).

You can either choose the technology for them, but in general I prefer to let them choose, on the grounds that just about anything they learn will present some interesting ideas to whatever it is your team works on. Any programming language will differ slightly or greatly from what you’re currently using, for example, which will in turn provide some interesting design ideas. Different database systems emphasize making it easy to store different “shapes” of data. Even video game toolkits can help foster creative approaches to user interface and data presentation. Regardless of who chooses the technology, though, talk it over and make sure the choice is one you can defend to your boss, if challenged.

This often partners well with the research spike/prototype or conference/training (see below).

Presentation time! One of the concerns older managers express with this kind of reward is of the “How do you know they’re actually doing the work” variety. It’s not an unreasonable concern, particularly since it’s easy for others to come to them with requests that feel like a higher priority (bug fixes, for example). One way to combat this is to ask for an internal/team-only presentation on what they’ve learned after a sufficient period of time. Because there’s now a “book report” required, employees have a real reason to make sure they prioritize learning the new thing.

Research spikes/prototypes#

Some developers love creating entirely new things, and when working as part of a team on a large project for a lengthy period of time, it can feel a little stifling. Therefore, when the team needs to prototype or “spike” out a potential solution, it can feel like a huge reward to be the one do that prototype/spike.

Conference/Training class#

While the most common scenario for sending one of your developers to a training class is to bring them up to speed on the tools and technology your team is currently using, for some developers the opportunity to go to a training class is a huge reward, particularly if it’s on something that’s “hot” in the market.

Conferences, as opposed to training classes, have multiple advantages, in that they offer the developer a chance to see multiple topics of interest, as well as “rub shoulders” with other developers and grow their network. This can often lead to some “wins” when they come back to the team, since now they can talk about what they saw at the conference that was interesting to them—or, even better, report back about what they heard (from both speakers and other attendees) about the technology your team was thinking of using for its next project.

Conferences and offsite training classes can be expensive, and given that they are usually outside of the office, they may require HR approval for the expense and/or time away.

Choice of tasks/harder challenges#

There’s a ton of interesting tasks and challenges that present themselves to the team during development, and for many developers, the best feeling in the world looking at something that seems difficult and impossible and getting it done anyway. For those developers, being asked to be the one to tackle the harder challenges is the best reward.

However, even absent that sense of “beating the challenge,” developers often find they have preferences over the kind of work they like to do that may be different than the work they normally do. Giving them their choice of tasks or stories to work on not only rewards them, but potentially broadens their skillset and makes your team more flexible to boot.

Mentoring#

It’s pretty widely-known that junior developers often want (need) easy access to somebody with greater experience and wisdom to turn to with questions and concerns, so making sure that they’re connected with that veteran presence can make a huge difference.

However, what’s less-well-known is that many senior developers want to be that veteran presence and “pay it back” (or forward, depending on your perspective) to the next generation. By pairing up a senior with a junior, you often reward both, and upskill the junior to boot. It’s a huge win-win.

Personal life opportunities/unofficial time off#

Parent-teacher conferences. Sports practices or games. Improv classes. Picking up the parents from the airport. Leaving early to get ready for a special night out. There’s an infinite number of reasons why your employees might want to “duck out” of the office for a bit during the usual office hours but wouldn’t want to take official PTO to do it. (In some cases, the company might have restrictions on the minimum amount usable—4 hours minimum is a common figure.) If you’ve got an employee who’s constantly been performing very well, be a little aggressive in encouraging them to take those opportunities, and leave the office. Obviously, you don’t want them “off the clock” so much that it hurts their performance, but your high performers typically won’t let that happen, and their improved mental health from the trust you’re showing in them by giving them this discretion will build a tighter bond between you.

Working condition adjustment#

Got a developer who’s always cold and sits under an A/C vent? Work with the facilities team to get them moved to a different desk (Or get them a company-branded parka!). Or perhaps they work from home but don’t have a curved monitor to use at home like the rest of you do at the office. Get one shipped out to them from the IT team. Do they prefer a particular kind of keyboard or mouse? Buy one for them. Employees will spend a third of their day, five days (or more) per week, working on things for you, so if there’s a little “something” you can offer them to make it easier for them to be more productive, explore it, and if it’s within your power or budget to do, make it happen.

Policy adjustment/interpretation#

As much as the company tries to create policies that work well to find the balancing point between individual and corporate benefit, some policies will just create heartache for some individuals within the company. For example, pre-pandemic, many companies had restrictive work-from-home policies, which could sometimes require some serious commute juggling for employees with working spouses and kids. Offering remote work options to those employees can often be seen as a huge reward. Or perhaps a later start time/end time works better for their schedule. Or perhaps they would prefer to use a different IDE than the rest of the team. There’s any number of little adjustments that can often help make a policy more tractable for an individual without losing the intent of the policy.

As a manager, you are invested with a certain amount of authority and support to manage your team in the manner in which you see fit. However, knowing exactly which policies are “fungible” and which need to be adhered to strictly is of tantamount importance, so consult with your leadership and HR teams to make sure you’re on solid ground before making any adjustments.